Aaaaaaand, were back!!!

Disaster and Counting: Mayfield, Kentucky is only beginning to dig out from the monstrous tornado that levelled the town and flattened a candle factory on top of more than 100 overnight workers.

  The overall number of certain dead is 90, but recovery workers might be finding bodies for weeks or months. At least eight people died in the candle factory and eight more in a Federal Express warehouse that also was destroyed.

  The state’s governor says as many as 1,000 homes have been destroyed.

  At least two dozen tornadoes touched down Friday night into Saturday morning hitting as many as five states over a stretch of 200 miles, but Kentucky took it the hardest.

  Reporters are fond of saying, “It looks like a war zone,” but if they do, they haven’t seen a war zone. Bombs and artillery, unless they are nuclear, don’t flatten buildings and neighborhoods the way this tornado did.

Omerta: Former President Donald Trump’s loyalists continue to follow the Mafia code of silence to cover whatever may have been their involvement in a possible plot to overthrow the legal election of Joe Biden to the presidency.

  The latest to vow silence is former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, who has refused to comply with a Congressional subpoena for documents related to the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus. He cites the exercise of “executive privilege” by the former president.

  While the Covid crisis may be unrelated to events of January 6^th, Trump is standing his ground on the claim that he enjoys executive privilege in regard to the insurrection even though he is no longer the chief executive. Trump has claimed that former staffers and advisers cannot testify in the January 6^th investigation if he says they can’t.

  Among those refusing is former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who risks being charged with contempt of Congress this week. Unfortunately, Meadows has already turned over to the investigating committee a PowerPoint presentation called “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 Jan.”  circulated by a retired Army colonel suggesting ways to overthrow the election. Phil Waldron, the retired colonel, said that there was “significant foreign interference in the election, here’s the proof,” and that, “These are constitutional, legal, feasible, acceptable and suitable courses of action.”

  Among the wildly insupportable claims in the presentation is that the Chinese gained control over the election system constituting a national security emergency, and that electronic voting machines were compromised to the extent that their count could not be trusted.

  It’s no wonder they don’t want to answer questions about this.

  While we’re on this topic, Barton Gellman has a devastating article in The Atlantic delving into how Republicans  are working hard to ensure the results of future elections. He writes, “By way of foundation for all the rest, Trump and his party have convinced a dauntingly large number of Americans that the essential workings of democracy are corrupt, that made-up claims of fraud are true, that only cheating can thwart their victory at the polls, that tyranny has usurped their government, and that violence is a legitimate response.”

  Gellman says, “Nothing close to this loss of faith in democracy has happened here before. Even Confederates recognized Lincoln’s election; they tried to secede because they knew they had lost.” 

  Read it here.

Covid Nation: This morning, the US is on the brink of 8,000,000 deaths from Covid 19 … 797,348. New cases are up 43 percent over the past two weeks and nearly 50 million cases have been reported in this country since the start of the pandemic.

  Three quarters of the American dead have been 65 and older.

  While the editorial staff here was taking a break, the Covid development known as the Omicron Variant entered the scene. It sounds like the title of a Robert Ludlum espionage novel, but it’s an even more contagious version of the virus that causes Covid 19. Omicron has been detected in 30 states.

  Omicron on the verge of becoming the dominant variant in parts of Europe.

  Researchers Jesse Bloom and Sarah Cobey write in The NY Times that, “There is solid evidence that this increased antibody resistance of Omicron will lead to more infections among the vaccinated and previously infected.” Not to mention the millions of unvaccinated who refuse to cooperate in the public’s health.

The Spin Rack: Fox News host Chris Wallace, who has been what passes for a voice of moderation and sanity on the network, announced he’s leaving to host a daily show on the CNN streaming service. He seems to have run out of tolerance for Tucker Carlson. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for a new gun law modelled after the Texas anti-abortion law. Under his law, any Californian could sue another who “manufactures, distributes, or sells an assault weapon or ghost gun kit or parts” in the state. — Lisa Sharkey, a Manhattan PR executive and former journalist convinced Nordtrom’s to pull a line of “Sleepy Jones” vertically-striped women’s pajamas that closely resemble what Nazi concentration camp victims were forced to wear. Sharkey lost Polish relatives in the Holocaust. This sort of thing has happened before and pajama makers keep forgetting the message. 

The Obit Page: Gothic novelist Anne Rice, who wrote the smash bestseller “Interview With a Vampire,” re-casting blood-drinking immortals as tragic antiheroes, died Saturday night at age 80.

In the Wind: The Mayfield Messenger, the local newspaper in devastated Mayfield, Kentucky, reports on one man who went missing a different way during the disaster. has gone on the run.

  The paper says 44-year-old Francisco Starks, an inmate on work release who survived the flattening of the local candle factory, was treated and released from the local hospital then went on the run.

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